Tools to Drive Digital Transformation in Professional Services

Professional services organizations are under multiple layers of pressure today to simultaneously log more billable hours, level-up security measures and grow their clientele—all while overseeing a digital transformation strategy to provide a modern, satisfying customer experience. From insurance to law firms, it’s a daily challenge to embrace digitalization while improving productivity and security.

That’s where including a digital document ecosystem in your transformation framework can help. Embracing technologies like PDF and eSign software solutions that streamline workflows, remove the burden of paper from your environment and speed up customer interactions can have a real impact on your bottom line.

But as just one component of an overall digital transformation strategy, document automation can arrive with some questions.

Below, we address common questions we get from professional services firms about how and why to integrate essential tools like PDF and eSign into a corporate digitalization strategy.

PDF and eSign: Key Aspects in Your Digital Transformation Strategy
How Do I Choose the Right Strategic Approach for My Digital Transformation Framework?
Nitro PDF & eSign for Digital Transformation: Try Before You Buy
Use Cases for PDF & eSign in Strategic Digital Transformation
How JLL Accelerated Digital Transformation with Nitro
Why Choose Nitro as Your Digital Transformation Partner?

Professional services firms arguably use more documentation than any other sector. From contracts to agreements to tax forms and letters, it’s a line of work built on paper.

Digitalizing your document processes through solutions like PDF and eSign will have several effects:

25% of respondents to an American Bar Association survey reported that their firms had experienced a data breach at some time during 2021. Professional services firms also continue to need to abide by client security requirements in addition to government and regulatory body regulations. With firms using scattered security tools and protocols, it’s essential to make document and data security a required part of your overall digital transformation strategy—and PDF and eSign solutions help you achieve this goal.

If you’re a professional services firm doing business internationally, then you’re well aware of the drag and delay manual approval and contract processes can cause. Effectively doing business in other countries requires a strategic digital approach that allows you to speed up existing workflows and cultivate new clientele on a global scale.

Speaking of new clientele, today’s professional services clients expect a digital-first approach from all businesses they interact with. Some call it the “Amazon Effect,” but it is the shift in customers’ expectations that interactions with a business—even in a B2B setting—will be online, speedy, easy and personalized. As part of your digital transformation roadmap, PDF and eSign solutions help you bring that experience to all your client interactions.

Manual document processes take workers away from billable work and keep them locked in non-billable admin. Without tools like PDF and eSign solutions, your firm experiences slower document management, which means slower client turnaround and fewer billable hours. A digital transformation strategy that includes these tools keeps your projects productive and your organization profitable.

There are many considerations for professional services firms when selecting the right tools for the move to digitalization—PDF and eSign are two of them. We have some tried-and-true tips for selecting the right provider and software to get you started.

1. Is the vendor considerate of your budget? No two professional services firms are alike, yet some vendors offer rigid pricing that does not accurately reflect your wants and needs. Flexibility is key, and that should extend to the cost of your digital transformation software solutions.

2. Will you be getting personal customer support? Unfortunately, many vendors treat your purchase of their PDF and eSign software as a transaction—nothing more. Ask about the level of support you’ll receive and how much it will cost you for dedicated support once you’ve onboarded the software.

3. Will integration and scalability be easy? Some vendors force you to buy separate licenses for commonly used platforms, or your users will need to log into those platforms individually when moving among them. Make sure your strategic roadmap includes finding out if your vendor will make your digital transformation process a smooth one—whatever your portfolio of platforms.

In contrast to most PDF and eSign solutions, Nitro offers a business pilot program that is risk-free and designed to help you truly see if our software is a good fit. The program allows you to test out our Productivity Platform—the all-in-one PDF, eSign, and analytics solution for the professional services industry—for several weeks.

We know the road to digitalization can be a long and uncertain one for any professional services firm, so we want you to feel confident in your choice of solutions to help you achieve a successful digital transformation strategy. Nitro’s free pilot program is a real opportunity for you to test drive the car before you buy it.

Try Nitro for free today.

Here are a few examples of how leveraging PDF and eSign solutions can support your digital transformation initiatives:

While audits may be every professional services firms’ worst nightmare, they don’t have to bring added strife when it comes to tracking document progress. eSignature audit trails give you visibility into your digital workflows and record all activities that take place in your documents during an eSign process. eSignature audit trails capture details of the signers’ names and IP addresses, confirmations of their authenticity, times, dates and more.

Learn more about high-trust eSigning in our Ultimate Guide to Electronic Signatures.

A digitalization strategy will be no good if you compromise the security and compliance of your data in the process. PDF and eSign solutions give you more control over the signing process so you can ensure all signatures have been captured and secured. You also reduce the risk of document tampering as files now transit through digital processes instead of human contacts. Features like two-factor authentication and encryption give you the ability to keep track of updates and who was involved at each step of a document’s progress.

A digital transformation significantly supports your firm’s efforts to drive sustainability—an important factor in client decision-making today when choosing service providers. You’ll also cut the massive costs you spend on paper and paper-related processes. Nitro helped Swiss Re, a global insurance firm, modernize their document processes and move 9,000 employees to a digital document ecosystem. The company’s VP of Information Technology Heinz Urech said they saw “increased productivity, reduced paper waste company-wide and a significant increase in user collaboration.”

A Fortune 500 financial and professional services firm specializing in real estate and investment management, JLL sought help with a digital transformation framework and the right tools and technologies to create it. Manual documentation such as invoicing and accounts payable workflows were stuck in paper-based processes and created obstacles to successful digitalization.

With Nitro, JLL has rapidly scaled 2,000 employees into using digital document processes, removed the pain from contract negotiations and licensing and made it easier to support future digital transformation strategies.

Nitro includes all the robust features a professional services firm needs for a strategic digital transformation roadmap, with PDF and eSign solutions that maintain cost transparency, flexibility and superior security.

With rapid time-to-value and an intuitive platform that requires very little learning curve, your organization will quickly begin your digitalization process. You’ll see more productivity, greater efficiencies across workflows and happier customers as you drive digitalization throughout your document management.

Nitro offers an analytics solution as part of our Productivity Platform that allows you see how your organization is using Nitro’s tools. You can use it to capture relevant data in order to track usage and improve performance. By measuring productivity using analytics, you’ll demonstrate ROI from your Nitro investment and automatically calculate savings.

If you have current systems and workflows that you need to retain as you digitally transform, Nitro offers powerful, easy integrations and APIs to connect those systems into one digital document ecosystem.

Nitro understands that your client data is of the utmost sensitivity and an essential part of a digital transformation framework, so we designed our software with built in security practices that keep your data, transactions and eSignatures safe and compliant. We protect the data of more than 1.5 million business customers every day. Learn more about our security practices here.

Nitro provides your firm with a dedicated customer success and support team as part of your relationship with us without having to spend big bucks like our competitors. We believe in treating our customers like you treat yours—as long-term, committed partners in your digital transformation strategy.

Your professional services organization can streamline workflows for the following:

• IRS-approved tax forms
  
• LLC formation
  
• Asset purchase agreements
  
• Confidentiality agreements
  
• Engagement letters
  
• Practice continuation agreements
  
• Employment contracts
  
• Power of attorney agreements
  
• Independent contractor agreements
  
• Client and stakeholder reports

To learn more about how Nitro can help your organization create a successful digital transformation strategy, get in touch today.